How to identify the social terrorist: Highly social, highly territorial and highly dangerous!

Share

Copy the link

Perhaps someone at work has sidelined you by creating an ‘in crowd’ you’re specifically excluded from? They all go out at the weekend and make sure they spend a lot of time talking about it on Monday, knowing you can’t join in with the jokes and asides.

Perhaps there’s someone in your family who tells tales about you behind your back but, to your face, they’re all hugs and smiles.

Perhaps you’re at school and there’s a group who single you out for ‘special attention’. You’re targeted at break time. They undermine your confidence by criticising what you do, your family, your hair or your clothes. When you walk past them, they whisper to each other and laugh. You feel lonely and isolated.

Chances are, if this is happening, you will be experiencing some very uncomfortable emotions. These fearful or angry feelings are actually trying to help you get your innate human needs met, by prompting you to take action to resolve this situation.

Some of our primary needs include those for safety, friendship, status and autonomy. We like to feel we are the authors of our own life, that the pen is in our hand to write the next chapter. We love independence and control yet, paradoxically, we also love to be part of the crowd.

Human beings are hardwired to connect with other human beings. Historically it served us well to be in a group rather than isolated on the outside, where we could be picked off by the wild animals of the Savannah.

When we group together and work together towards a common goal, we are capable of amazing things. However, when we become a tribe, we are also capable of some pretty horrible things too, as recent events have dramatically shown on a world wide scale.

The rise of the social terrorist

The neo-tribal society we now find ourselves a part of has also seen the evolution of a subtle yet frightening phenomenon; the social terrorist, whose relational aggression can be played out on both a micro and macro level, either face to face or via social media.

Relational aggression, as the psychologists call it, certainly has its roots in tribalism. When we form a group, it is inevitable that we create a ‘them and us’ situation. You are either on the inside or on the outside. It’s all about power and control and can be very destructive to individuals and to the wider community too, just like any other form of terrorism.

Often the central figures are highly skilled in the dark art of sabotage and deceit. They may initially take on the role of friends then go to great lengths to fabricate stories and twist reality about those they decide to prey on. The social terrorist will sit back and watch, having lit the detonator, and wait for the inevitable explosion of bad feelings that follows.

This type of behaviour can be very subtle. We learn from a very young age that when we create ‘exclusion’ we also create ‘inclusion’. It often begins at school where cliques of a social elite ‘it crowd’ create a dynamic which has nothing to do with friendship and everything to do with power and control.

How to identify the social terrorist

As with most things, knowledge and information helps to reclaim control. Learning to recognise and name the behaviours will give you an early ‘heads up’ that can help you navigate safely through some dangerous social territory, avoiding the relational land mines along the way.

Just like the violent terrorists who operate on a grand scale, the social terrorist will try and exert control by:

Creating a group or ‘in-crowd’ and excluding specific people or groups

Assassinating someone's personal or professional reputation

Using mental coercion

Intentionally stirring up feelings of disgust, fear, panic or chaos

Intimidating by blackmail

Being emotionally violent or using mental oppression

Spreading false or fabricated information

Attempting to manipulate public opinion

Spreading feelings of hatred

Mentally or physically bullying

What we can you do to defeat the bullies

The antidote to all this is honesty and transparency. The social terrorist hates to be called out or exposed for their covert behaviour. You can take back control by:

Do you want to be happier and more resilient?
Some people seem to just 'bounce back' no matter what life throws at them.
We can't choose many of life's events but we certainly do have a choice about how we respond.
My passion for mental health began 25 years ago when I suffered postnatal depression and realised the help I needed simply wasn't there.
The pills didn't work. In fact they made things worse. What I really needed was to understand how anxiety, depression and emotional ill health can develop. I needed to learn good 'mind management' skills which would act like a 'psychological inoculation' against future problems.
When I recovered, I made a decision to find out how and why I had become so depressed and made a personal pledge to do something to provide the kind of help for others which I had needed. I wanted to prevent people suffering unnecessarily.
So I embarked on a personal and professional journey and, along the way, developed a brand new approach to health and well-being.
My journey began with four years of traditional counselling training, followed by a postgraduate diploma in psychotherapy. I studied cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT) neuro-linguistic programming (NLP), hypnotherapy, coaching and cognitive neuroscience.
I built up 30,000 hours professional experience which I brought together into the new happiness and resilience programme l named 'Fusion.'
I also wrote a book about how to resolve post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), founded a therapeutic coaching charity and trained volunteers to work in this new way. This training programme would later become the nationally accredited Fusion Therapeutic Coaching Diploma and Distance Learning Skills Certificate.
Now...
The journey continues.
Now I want to reveal all my professional secrets about good mind management to as many people as possible through social media and by training Fusion Breakthrough trainers from all over the world.
One of them could be you...
Something new.. Something different.. Something which lasts..
What if you could experience one day which could actually change your life for good; giving you your own eureka moment; not only helping you create a vision of the life you want to live, but actually give you the real skills to get there and stay there?
Fusion is a tried and tested system which combines the best of psychotherapy and coaching into a powerful new formula for lasting change.
My aim is to help and empower as many people as possible to feel their best, be their best and live their best lives.
Perhaps I could help you too....